Sunday, September 17, 2000

The Longest Journey | 9.5

Absolutely beautiful and surreal. Like so many woven dreams and breathtaking vistas and grand accomplishments... this game is everything I hoped it would be from the time I first spotted the box to the final credits. There is also no false advertisement in the title, as this is an extremely long journey. After dozens and dozens of diverse characters and locations and victories, you realize you have three discs of game left to go through. I played this game for months, though not always at the computer. I would get stuck on a particularly devious puzzle or plot point and wouldn't play for a while, but found myself brainstorming possible solutions all the time. There are many hours of dialogue and monologue (April tends to talk to herself about whatever is on her mind, which are often the same questions you find yourself asking) and most of it has some comic relief, usually from April's understandable cynacism (she does see and hear some very strange things).

If you want an awesome adventure game that will stretch the limits of your imagination and that will take for-freakin'-ever to finish, I highly recommend this game, although you'd probably love it regardless.

- Some of the puzzles are entirely based on "hunt the pixel" -- success hinges on finding the one tiny pixel that's hidden behind something else. I want puzzles to require intelligence and flexibility on my part, not keen eyesight and infinite patience in moving the mouse over the screen.

The game *was* good. The voice acting was excellent, the graphics were pretty, and the characters were engaging. The story was also very good (though some threads never got resolved, which was annoying).